Words In Stone
by SignsOfSun
Summary: AU. Because the foundation of this fic would mean an alternate ending to Grave Danger. Warrick’s let the happy life he had built for himself disintegrate little by little and now he’s faced with a choice, stay captive to a piece of the past that is slo


Author: SignsOfSun

Title: Words In Stone

Note: We'll classify this under mini series since it's a multi-parter but not quite long enough to be a full fledged series. Geez! I should get around to writing some CSI fluff or maybe straight out adventure...something...or you guys are going to get the wrong impression about me and think I'm severely depressed…or even more likely…obsessed with making these character's lives very angst ridden. Yep, definitely have to write a lighter fic. So many ideas and so little time.

Main Character: Warrick Other Characters: Grissom and the team.

Summary: AU. Because the foundation of this fic would mean an alternate ending to Grave Danger. Warrick's let the happy life he had built for himself disintegrate little by little and now he's faced with a choice, stay captive to a piece of the past that is slowly killing him or fight to break free and rebuild. Will the team finally be able to find a way to help him make the right choice? Or will a haunting discovery from the past and a new potential loss push him over the edge?

_Warning: Character Death(s?). But I'm not saying who._

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_Words In Stone I_

The final few rays of the day's light filtered in under the drawn curtains of Warrick Brown's bedroom. His eyes fluttered a few times before peeking open to stay. Yawning, he stretched out his sleep heavy body underneath the covers. After running the palms of his hands down over his face he retrieved his watch from where it lay on the nightstand. Despite his intentions it was not the time of day that caught his attention, but the date. Three years to the very day.

Three years since his best friend was stolen from his life.

They'd never found Nick.

He was still out there. His remains were buried somewhere in a plexiglas coffin. An unknown and unmarked resting place for a man who deserved so much more.

But was Nick Stokes' spirit truly at rest? Warrick Brown doubted it. How could he be? They'd let him down.

They hadn't brought him home.

Warrick roughly tossed the watch back on the bed table and turned his head to stare at the window and the fading light it provided the room. The dark tangerine hue of the sunset seemed to cross over into the replaying of the memory inside his mind. It had been pitch black that night as they stood on the groundsof the Flora Nevada plant nursery, staring at a gaping hole in the ground, but now the memory's edges glowed a deep sunset orange.

"_I was sure we'd found him. It had to be. We found the webcam. It had to be him," Catherine whispered her disbelief._

"_We followed the evidence. We did everything right. And another dead end.," Grissom stated. His gaze was fixed downward into the hole in the ground a foot in front of his feet the entire time he spoke. _

"_I can't believe it. I just can't believe it," Greg simply said in a near chant. There was a beat of silence before Warrick had finally found a tiny fraction of his own voice and was able to utter anything audible._

'_I'm sorry Nicky. I am so sorry."_

_An intense emotional silence gripped the group for the passage of what must have been five solid minutes. No one moved. No one spoke. It felt like eternity inside Warrick's heart. Ten minutes earlier Warrick's watch had beeped, informing them that Nick was out of air and, therefore, out of time. Warrick's chest had hurt suddenly. It had tightened to the point of suffocating him. He swallowed down painfully against the rock hard knot inside his throat and inhaled an unsteady breath. He caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head away from the grave before him. Grissom who stood at his side had turned to face the rest of the group. A second later his voice cut through the stillness surrounding them._

"_We'll find him and I don't want to hear one word, not one syllable, to the contrary. Is that understood?" Grissom stated sharply and walked away from them, somewhere off into the darkness the trees supplied._

But they hadn't. They never found Nicky that night or any other one. They'd remembered that Kelly Gordon worked with plants and Grissam identified the ants that invaded the box Nick lay inside of. They had narrowed down the range of Gordon's last trip and the webcam's transmitter range. How could it not have been where Nick was?

When Catherine had found a webcam transmitter they were certain that they had it. So they dug, searching frantically. And mere seconds after Warrick's watch alerted them that Nick's air supply had run out and he would be beginning to suffocate, they had hit something with their shovels. The clink of the metal tip against a solid surface had spider webbed relief through Warrick's mind and body. They had found him and there was still enough time to free him before he took his last breath. Not much but enough. On his knees Warrick had wiped away the dirt covering the clear box. His heart broke apart when he saw it wasn't Nick in the box they had unearthed. Instead his gaze fell upon a very young female face. The pretty brunette had been perfectly still and the tint of her skin told the tale. She had been dead nearly two day's time already. Another prototype. Another step in Walter Gordon's testing to ensure at least one CSI would suffer and die. The girl they found that day was a runaway from Oregon who'd found her way to Las Vegas and ended up a prostitute. Walter Gordon was nothing if not smart. He must have needed to test out the plan on a human so he picked up the girl as if he was a normal John, knocked her out, and then buried her. He knew that it would be a while before anyone missed her. At least long enough for him to blow himself up. But there was still some questions that were mysteries such as the webcam transmitter and the ants? If those fire ants were rare in Nevada and only found at plant nurseries why couldn't they find Nick when they searched the other ten places?

Warrick blew out a breath and pushed himself up into a sitting position. The warm glow from the window had vanished and darkness had taken its place. The realization of the loss of time didn't faze him. It was no longer an unfamiliar occurrence. The memory had stolen time away before and he was certain it would do it again. Sometimes something little would trigger it and other times there was no rhyme or reason to why it floated to the surface. This was the third time it had been the date to spark it to life, but that didn't diminish how vivid or how painful it was any.

Sluggishly Warrick got up and headed into the bathroom to turn on the shower. While waiting for it to reach his preferred steamy temperature he picked up the small cup he kept on the sink. He turned on the cold water and filled the glass up to the top then downed it in nearly one swallow. It was discarded with a clunk back onto the sink as Warrick looked at his own tired reflection in the mirror. It seemed almost silly that he looked stressed and exhausted. What did he have anymore to stress over? His CSI days were long gone. He'd quit when the one case he most needed to solve had eluded unraveling. He just had a job now, just a job that could be left behind at quitting time. It could be forgotten. Unlike so many other things. His wife had declared a separation three months earlier. In tears she had told him that when he found the piece of himself he'd lost or at the least come to terms with its loss she would consider a reconciliation. She was gone and the place he laid his head every night was no longer a home. Friends? His recollection of when he had last spoken to any of his former teammates went back further than he could keep up with counting the days. Warrick stared into his own eyes and his aloneness stared back with a harsh clarity.

The muffled ringing of his phone pulled him back from the dark empty existence that his eyes revealed he had been hypnotized by. As he moved out of the bathroom and away from the running water the sound of the ring became louder and felt more and more like a rude interruption to his solitude. His hand reached for the handset just as the answering machine picked up the call for him. His thumb hovering over the Talk button, Warrick listened to the message to find out if it was someone he really cared to talk to at that particular moment on that particular day.

"Warrick. It's Grissom. We…" the quiet but steady voice began before dead air filled the space for a second or so. When his voice continued it was even softer and the words were few and powerful and laced with a trace of sadness.

"Warrick, we found him. We found Nicky."

_To Be Continued…_


End file.
